\"Daddy\" and \"Lady Lazarus\" by Plath

Sylvia Plath: The Use of Dramatic Monologue as Confessional Poetry

Sylvia Plath presents an unusual paradox as a writer. On one hand, she is lauded by literary critics, particularly feminist critics, for her use of confessional poetry. Specifically, in poems such as "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" Plath is assumed to be 'confessing' certain aspects of her personal life. Like the speaker of "Daddy," she was the daughter of a German father; like the subject of "Lady Lazarus" she attempted suicide several times. On the other hand, both of these poems are still written in the genre of the dramatic monologue, in which a speaker articulates an idea through the assumed persona of another person obviously different from the poet.

In "Daddy," perhaps Plath's most famous poem, the speaker is the child of a former Nazi officer who is desperately trying to exorcise the ghost of her father.

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

The speaker of the poem "Daddy" identifies not with her father, but with her father's murdered victims, suggesting that the oppression she felt at his hands as a young girl mirrors that of the oppression he wielded against the Jews of Europe. The political oppression of the German man parallels his oppression within the home of his family. "Rather than an elegy or an angry conversation of a girl with her deceased father, 'Daddy' can be seen as a manifestation of the different aspects of a woman's oppression by patriarchy" (Hassanpour & Hashim 123). In other words, this gives the poem an explicitly political dimension that it would lack if simply read as an expression of Plath's feelings about her own father who was of German extraction but not a Nazi. Plath explicitly invokes the Holocaust in every line, effectively ratcheting upon the intensity of the poem and making its subject matter larger than that of a familial relationship.

Plath almost playfully creates connections with her poetry and her own life, even while using a dramatic monologue to hold the speaker at a distance. "Dramatic monologue in poetry, also known as a persona poem, shares many characteristics with a theatrical monologue: an audience is implied; there is no dialogue; and the poet speaks through an assumed voice -- a character, a fictional identity, or a persona" ("Poetic technique: Dramatic monologue," Poets.org.). Plath's dramatic persona is unique, in comparison with other dramatic poems such as the work of Robert Browning's assumed, murderous persona in "My Last Duchess." "Daddy" manages to be intensely personal in the lyrical mode yet contains enough identifying details to still qualify as a dramatic monologue and make explicit use of Holocaust symbolism in a manner that Plath could not, were she only referencing her own life.

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

Plath draws a direct connection to the mass slaughter of Europe, the perverse and masochistic attractions of fascism, and the way that women often undo themselves by being attracted to violent men, again and again. The Nazi father figure is simultaneously attractive and repulsive with his "bright blue eyes" and "neat mustache" which conveys his Aryan nationality and his masculinity (Hassanpour & Hashim 4).

At the end of the poem, the speaker must overcome 'daddy' to find her true identity. However, it is the villagers he father wronged, not the speaker, that enact the ultimate exorcism of the Nazi: "There's a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never liked you." Only after that can the speaker be free of the curse of her father -- or at least 'through' in the ambiguous words that end the poem about her fate. The ability to free one's self of an oppressive father requires social changes, not just changes within the individual.

Plath is able to tap into her own personal struggles with men and juxtapose them into a larger, collective historical struggle between marginalized people and fascism. Her poetry, through the use of the dramatic monologue, is simultaneously personal and political. This ironic tone combined with symbolism gives the work added weight beyond the lyrical confessional is also seen in her dramatic monologue "Lady Lazarus." In this poem, the speaker is not the male Lazarus of the Bible but a woman who has made coming back from the grave her carnival-like 'trick.' There is obvious, implied reference to Plath's own, highly public suicide attempt when she was still an undergraduate at Smith College, from which she recovered.

Lady Lazarus, the resurrected woman, simultaneously mocks the doctors who have brought her back to life as well as celebrates what she sees as her unique 'talent.' According to Plath herself, "the speaker is a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. The only trouble is, she has to die first. She is the Phoenix, the libertarian spirit, what you will. She is also just a good, plain, very resourceful woman" (Curley 213). Plath very explicitly speaks about the subject as a separate woman to herself and although there is a clear confessional element in the way in which Lady Lazarus talks about being brought back from the dead by doctors, the language and the tone of the poem is also designed to distance the poet from the poem's speaking subject:

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

In "Lady Lazarus," Plath blurs the line between speaker and poet -- sometimes Lady Lazarus, in her showmanship and her language seems distanced from Plath because of the irony and humor used to depict the crowd's cold fascination with her. At other times, there are specific references made to Plath's life such as when she says

"The first time it happened I was ten. / It was an accident." This detail sounds relatively realistic, versus when she calls those who brought her back 'Herr Doktor' and 'Herr Enemy,' (recalling German fascism and a deliberate play on the sound of the words 'Herr' and 'her.'). Throughout the poem, Plath leaves the speaker guessing as to how much she is describing her own life vs. how much she is mocking the idea of any woman (or any person) being brought back from mental illness into normalcy after attempting suicide. Although not explicitly set in a postwar setting like "Daddy," "Lady Lazarus" does invoke the war and parallels the Nazi regime with that of the oppression of women in its reference to how the woman is signified by a "cake of soap, / A wedding ring, / A gold filling." Plath is once again not herself a survivor and the speaker of the poem but through this language she suggests the struggles of Lady Lazarus and by implication all people against oppression have a common link.